“I CANNA be bothered with that Shakespeare,” Kate cried, hopelessly,
after many days of him; “the man's a mournin' thing! Could he not give
us something cheery, with 'Come, all ye boys!' in it, the same as the
trawlers sing in Colonsay? There was far more fun last week in the penny
_Horner_”.
So Bud dipped in the bottomless well of knowledge again and scooped up
Palgrave's _Golden Treasury_, and splashed her favorite lyrics at the
servant's feet. Kate could not stand _The Golden Treasury_ either; the
songs were nearly all so lamentable they would make a body greet. Bud
assured her on the best authority that the sweetest songs were those
that told of saddest thought, but Kate said that might be right enough
for gentry who had no real troubles of their own, but they weren't the
thing at all for working folk. What working folk required were songs
with tunes to them, and choruses that you could tramp time to with
your feet. History, too, was as little to her taste; it was all
incredible--the country could never have kept up so many kings and
queens. But she liked geography, for the map enabled her to keep an eye
on Charles as he went from port to port, where letters in her name, but
still the work of Lennox, would be waiting for him.
The scheme of education was maintained so long because the town had
come upon its melancholy days and Bud began to feel depression, so that
playing teacher was her only joy. The strangers had gone south with the
swallows; the steamer no longer called each day to make the pavement
noisy in the afternoon with the skliff of city feet, so different from
the customary tread of tackety boots; the coachman's horn, departing,
no longer sounded down the valley like a brassy challenge from the wide,
wide world. Peace came to the burgh like a swoon, and all its days were
pensive. Folk went about their tasks reluctant, the very smoke of the
chimneys loitered lazily round the ridges where the starlings chattered,
and a haze was almost ever over the hills. When it rose, sometimes, Bud,
from her attic window, could see the road that wound through the distant
glen. The road!--the road!--ah, that began to have a meaning and a kind
of cry, and wishfully she looked at it and thought upon its other
end, where the life she had left and read about was loudly humming and
marvellous things were being done. Charles Maclean of Oronsay,
second mate, whom she loved unto destruction, now that he was writing
regularly, fairly daft himself to get such charming, curious letters
as he thought from Kate, had been adjusted by the doctor, and was once
again on the heaving main. It would be Cardiff or Fleetwood, Hamburg,
Santander, or Bilbao, whose very name is like a story, and his tarry
pen, infected by the child's example, induced to emulation, always
bravely sought to give some picture of the varied world through which
he wandered. Of noisy ports did he communicate, crowded with ships; of
streets and lofty warehouses, and places where men sang, and sometimes
of the playhouse, where the villain was a bad one and the women were so
braw.
“What is braw?” asked Bud.
“It's fine clothes,” said Kate; “but what's fine clothes if you are not
pure in heart and have a figure?” and she surveyed with satisfaction her
own plump arms.
But the child guessed at a wider meaning for the word as Charles used
it, and thought upon the beauteous, clever women of the plays that she
had seen herself in far Chicago, and since her vicarious lover would
have thought them braw and plainly interesting, she longed to emulate
them, at least to see them again. And oh! to see the places that he
wrote of and hear the thundering wheels and jangling bells! And there
was also Auntie Ailie's constant stimulus to thoughts and aspirations
that could meet no satisfaction in this little town. Bell dwelt
continually within the narrow walls of her immediate duty, content, like
many, thank the Lord! doing her daily turns as best she could, dreaming
of nothing nobler. Dan had ranged wider in his time and knew the world
a great deal better, and had seen so much of it was illusion, its prizes
“will-o'-the-wisp,” that now his wild geese were come home. He could see
the world in the looking-glass in which he shaved, and there was much
to be amused at. But Ailie's geese were still flying far across the
firmament, knowing no place of rest. The child had bewitched her! it was
often the distant view for her now, the region unattainable; and though
apparently she had long ago surrendered to her circumstances, she now
would sometimes silently irk at her prisoning here, in sleep-town,
where we let things slide until to-morrow, while the wild birds of her
inclination flew round the habitable, wakeful world. Unwittingly--no,
not unwittingly always--she charged the child with curiosity
unsatisfiable, and secret discontent at little things and narrow, with
longings for spacious arenas and ecstatic crowded hours. To be clever,
to be brave and daring, to venture and make a glorious name--how her
face would glow and all her flesh would quiver picturing lives she would
have liked to live if only she had had the chance! How many women are
like that--silent by the hearth, seemingly placid and content as they
dam and mend and wait on the whim and call of dullards!
Bell might be content and busy with small affairs, but she had a quick,
shrewd eye and saw the child's unrest. It brought her real distress, for
so had the roving spirit started in her brother William. Sometimes she
softly scolded Lennox, and even had contemplated turning her into some
other room from the attic that had the only window in the house from
which the high-road could be seen, but Ailie told her that would be to
make the road more interesting for the child. “And I don't know,” she
added, “that it should worry us if she does indulge herself in dreams
about the great big world and its possibilities. I suppose she'll have
to take the road some day.”
“Take the road!” cried Bell, almost weeping. “Are you daft, Ailie Dyce?
What need she take the road for? There's plenty to do here, and I'm sure
she'll never be better off anywhere else. A lot of nonsense! I hope you
are not putting notions in her head; we had plenty of trouble with her
father.”
“It would break my heart to lose her, I assure you,” said Aunt Ailie,
softly; “but--” and she ended with a sigh.
“I'm sure you're content enough yourself?” said Bell; “and you're not by
any means a diffy.”
“Indeed I am content,” admitted Ailie; “at least--at least I'm not
complaining. But there is a discontent that's almost holy, a roving
mood that's the salvation of the race. There were, you mind, the Pilgrim
Fathers--”
“I wish to the Lord they had bided at home!” cried Bell. “There's never
been happy homes in this Christian land since they started emigration.”
And at that Miss Ailie smiled and Dan began to chuckle.
“Does it not occur to you, Bell,” said he, “that but for the Pilgrim
Fathers there would never have been Bud?”
“I declare neither there would!” she said, smiling. “Perhaps it was
as well they went, poor things! And, of course, there must be many an
honest, decent body in America.”
“Quite a number!” said Ailie. “You would not expect this burgh to hold
them all, or even Scotland. America's glad to get the overflow.”
“Ah, you're trying to make me laugh, the pair of you, and forget my
argument,” said Bell; “but I'll not be carried away this time. I'm
feared for the bairn, and that's telling you. Oh, Ailie, mind what her
mother was--poor girl! poor, dear girl! play-acting for her living,
roving from place to place, with nothing you could call a home; laughing
and greeting and posturing before lights for the diversion of the
world--”
“We might do worse than give the world diversion,” said Ailie, soberly.
“Yes, yes, but with a painted face and all a vain profession--that is
different, is it not? I love a jovial heart like Dan's, but to make
the body just a kind of fiddle! It's only in the body we can be
ourselves--it is our only home; think of furnishing it with shams, and
lighting every room that should be private, and leaving up the blinds
that the world may look in at a penny a head! How often have I thought
of William, weeping for a living, as he had to do sometimes, no doubt,
and wondered what was left for him to do to ease his grief when Mary
died. Oh, curb the child, Ailie! curb the dear wee lassie--it's you it
all depends on; she worships you; the making of her's in your hands.
Keep her humble. Keep her from thinking of worldly glories. Teach her to
number her days that she may apply her heart unto wisdom. Her mind's too
often out of here and wandering elsewhere--it was so with William--it
was once the same with you.”
Indeed, it was no wonder that Bud's mind should wander elsewhere since
the life about her had grown so suddenly dull. In these days Wanton
Wully often let his morning sleep too long possess him, and hurrying
through the deserted dawn with his breeches scarcely on, would ring the
bell in a hasty fury half an hour behind the proper time. But a little
lateness did not matter in a town that really never woke. Men went to
work in what we call a dover--that is, half asleep; shopkeepers came
blinking drowsily down and took their shutters off and went back to
breakfast, or, I sometimes fear, to bed, and when the day was aired and
decency demanded that they should make some pretence at business they
stood by the hour at their shop doors looking at the sparrows, wagtails,
and blue-bonnets pecking in the street, or at the gulls that quarrelled
in the syver sand. Nothing doing. Two or three times a day a cart from
the country rumbled down the town breaking the Sabbath calm; and on one
memorable afternoon there came a dark Italian with an organ who must
have thought that this at last was Eldorado, so great was his reward
from a community sick of looking at one another. But otherwise nothing
doing, not a thing! As in the dark of the fabled underland the men
who are blind are kings, George Jordon, the silly man, who never had a
purpose, and carried about with him an enviable eternal dream, seemed
in that listless world the only wideawake, for he at least kept moving,
slouching somewhere, sure there was work for him to do if only he could
get at it. Bairns dawdled to the schools, dogs slept in the track where
once was summer traffic, Kate, melancholy, billowed from the kitchen
window, and into the street quite shamelessly sang sad, old Gaelic songs
which Mr. Dyce would say would have been excellent if only they were put
to music, and her voice was like a lullaby.
One day Bud saw great bands of countless birds depart, passing above the
high-road, and standing in the withering garden heard as it were without
a breath of wind the dry rattle of dead leaves fall. It frightened her.
She came quickly in to the tea-table almost at her tears.
“Oh, it's dre'ffle,” she said. “It's Sunday all the time, without good
clothes and the gigot of mutton for dinner. I declare I want to yell.”
“Dear me!” said Miss Bell, cheerfully, “I was just thinking things were
unusually lively for the time of year. There's something startling every
other day. Aggie Williams found her fine, new kitchen range too big for
the accommodation, and she has covered it with cretonne and made it into
a whatnot for her parlor. Then there's the cantata; I hear the U. P.
choir is going to start to practise it whenever Duncan Gill next door to
the hall is gone--he's near his end, poor body! they're waiting on, but
he says he could never die a Christian death if he had to listen to them
at their operatics through the wall.”
“It's not a bit like this in Chicago,” said the child, and her uncle
chuckled.
“I dare say not,” said he. “What a pity for Chicago! Are you wearying
for Chicago, lassie?”
“No,” said Bud, deliberating. “It was pretty smelly, but my! I wish to
goodness folk here had a little git-up-and-go to them!”
“Indeed, I dare say it's not a bit like Chicago,” admitted Auntie Bell.
“It pleases myself that it's just like Bonnie Scotland.”
“It's not a bit like Scotland, either,” said Bud. “I calc'lated Scotland
'd be like a story-book all the time, chock-full of men-at-arms and
Covenanters, and things father used to talk about, Sundays, when he was
kind of mopish and wanted to make me Scotch. I've searched the woods for
Covenanters and can't find one; they must have taken to the tall timber
and I haven't seen any men-at-arms since I landed, 'cepting the empty
ones up in the castle lobby.”
“What _did_ you think Scotland would be like, dear?” asked Ailie.
“Between me and Winifred Wallace, we figured it would be a great place
for chivalry and constant trouble among the crowned heads. I expected
there'd be a lot of 'battles long ago,' same as in the 'Highland Reaper'
in the sweet, sweet G. T.”
“What's G. T.?” asked Auntie Bell; and Bud laughed slyly and looked at
her smiling Auntie Ailie, and said: “We know, Auntie Ailie, don't we?
It's GRAND! And if you want to know, Auntie Bell, it's just Mr.
Lovely Palgrave's _Golden Treasury. That's_ a book, my Lord! I expected
there'd be battles every day--”
“What a blood-thirsty child!” said Miss Ailie.
“I don't mean truly, truly battles,” Bud hurried to explain, “but the
kind that's the same as a sound of revelry off--no blood, but just a
lot of bang. But I s'pose battles are gone out, like iron suits. Then
I thought there'd be almost nothing but cataracts and ravines
and--and--mountain passes, and here and there a right smart Alick in
short trunks and a feather in his hat winding a hunting-horn. I used to
think, when I was a little, wee, silly whitterick, that you wound a horn
every Saturday night with a key just like a clock; but I've known for
years and years it's just blowing. The way father said, and from the
things I read, I calc'lated all the folk in Scotland'd hate one another
like poison, and start a clan, and go out chasing all the other clans
with direful slogans and bagpipes skirling wildly in the genial breeze.
And the place would be crowded with lovelorn maidens--that kind with the
starched millstones round their necks like Queen Mary always wore. My,
it must have been rough on dear old Mary when she fell asleep in church!
But it's not a bit like that; it's only like Scotland when I'm in bed,
and the wind is loud, and I hear the geese. Then I think of the trees
all standing out in the dark and wet, and the hills, too, the way
they've done for years and years, and the big, lonely places with nobody
in them, not a light even; and I get the croodles and the creeps, for
that's Scotland, full of bogies. I think Scotland's stone-dead.”
“It's no more dead than you are yourself,” said Miss Bell, determined
ever to uphold her native land. “The cleverest people in the world come
from Scotland.”
“So father used to say; but Jim, he said he guessed the cleverer they
were the quicker they came. I'm not a bit surprised they make a dash
from home when they feel so dead and mopish and think of things and see
that road.”
“Road?” said Uncle Dan. “What road?”
“My road,” said the child. “The one I see from my window--oh, how it
rises and rises and winds and winds, and it just _shrieks_ on you to
come right along and try.”
“Try what?” asked her uncle, curiously.
“I dunno,” said Bud, thinking hard; “Auntie Ailie knows, and I 'spect
Auntie Bell knows, too. I can't tell what it is, but I fairly tickle
to take a walk along. Other times I fee I'd be mighty afraid to go, but
Auntie Ailie says you should always do the things you're afraid to do,
for they're most always the only things worth doing.”
Mr. Dyce, scratching the ear of Footles, who begged at the side of his
chair, looked over the rims of his glasses and scrutinized the child.
“All roads,” said he, “as you'll find a little later, come to the same
dead end, and most of us, though we think we're picking our way, are
all the time at the mercy of the School-master, like Geordie Jordon.
The only thing that's plain in the present issue is that we're not brisk
enough here for Young America. What do you think we should do to make
things lively?”
“Hustle,” said Bud. “Why, nobody here moves faster 'n a funeral, and
they ought to gallop if they want to keep up with the band.”
“I'm not in a hurry myself,” said her uncle, smiling. “Maybe that's
because I think I'm all the band there is myself. But if you want to
introduce the Chicago system you should start with Mrs. Wright's Italian
warehouse down the street--the poor body's losing money trying to run
her shop on philanthropic principles.”
Bud thought hard a while. “Phil--phil--What's a philanthropic
principle?” she asked.
“It's a principle on which you don't expect much interest except in
another world,” said her uncle. “The widow's what they call a Pilgrim
hereabouts; if the meek were to inherit the earth in a literal sense,
she would long ago have owned the whole county.”
“A truly Christian woman!” said Miss Bell.
“I'm not denying it,” said Mr. Dyce; “but even a Christian woman should
think sometimes of the claims of her creditors, and between ourselves it
takes me all my time to keep the wholesale merchants from hauling her to
court.”
“How do you manage it?” asked Ailie, with a twinkle in her eyes; but Dan
made no reply--he coughed and cleaned his spectacles.